The Symbionts

The Research Symbiont Awards, given annually, recognize exemplars in the practice of data sharing. It is a companion to the Research Parasite Awards.

There are two Research Symbiont Awards:

Early Career Clinical Research Symbiont Award: This award is restricted to early career symbiotic scientists (including but not restricted to postdocs, graduate students, or recently appointed principal investigators) working on human health.

General Symbiosis Award: This award is given to a scientist working in any field who has shared data beyond the expectations of their field. For example, we seek applications from symbiotic scientists working in sociology, ecology, astrophysics, or any other field of science.

Award winners will receive a travel reimbursement up to $2,500 so that they may be recognized at the 2019 Pacific Symposium on Biocomputing in Hawaii. In addition, winners will receive a very cool stuffed animal.

ELIGIBILITY & SELECTION CRITERIA

Applicable to both the GENERAL SYMBIOSIS AWARD and the EARLY CAREER CLINICAL RESEARCH SYMBIONT AWARD:

The applicant must have created an openly shared scientific resource or dataset beyond typical standards of their field.

The sharing mechanism must be clearly permissible per all applicable ethical or legal restrictions, e.g., informed consent document.

The sharing mechanism must be as easy for people who wish to use the data as is feasible within ethical and legal constraints.

The dataset must be remarkable for its richness, granularity, and quality, such that it is inviting to people who wish to use the data.

If the dataset is an endeavor supported by a sponsor with a conflict of interest vis a vis the results, the applicant should explain how the sharing mechanism demonstrates independence from the sponsor. If there is no such conflict of interest, the applicant should say so.

Attention will be paid in the judging to whether the data were effectively re-used to answer questions not addressed in an initial publication reporting the dataset or data notification.

Additional consideration will be given to datasets with the clearest publicly available audit trail of decisions potentially affecting people who wish to use the data.

Additional criteria applicable only to the EARLY CAREER CLINICAL RESEARCH SYMBIONT AWARD:

The awardee must have contributed to the symbiotic resource during the training stage of their career (prior to any faculty rank, e.g., Instructor, Clinical Lecturer, or Assistant Professor). If the awardee has assumed a faculty rank, she or he should not have been in that position for more than 3 years.

The award will be based on the description of the resource in the application letter, inspection of the dataset’s website for its access policies, and the work achieved because of data sharing (as exemplified by the PDF of a manuscript submitted with the application letter).

The impact of the data sharing will be judged in part on the potential of secondary analyses to improve human health.

Additional selection criteria for the GENERAL SYMBIOSIS AWARD:

The awardee must be in an independent investigator position in academia, industry or public sector.

By submitting an application you agree that the decisions of the Research Symbiont Award Committee are final, and the Committee is unable to provide feedback on applications that were not selected.

How to Apply

We encourage readers to broadly share this call, and we strongly encourage members of groups that are underrepresented in scientific communities to apply for this award.

Applications for the 2018 Research Symbiont Awards must be received by September 30, 2018 at 5PM HST (Hawaii Standard Time) at researchsymbiontawards@gmail.com. Applicants can apply for themselves or nominate another person.
Applicants should submit a concise letter (around 2 pages in letter or A4 format) describing the symbiotic resource. In particular, the letter should include:

A description of how the applicant meets the criteria for the award.

The URL of the resource’s website.

A description of why the resource represents an outstanding contribution to open science and secondary analyses.

Applicants are also encouraged to attach a PDF of an article that is not authored by the applicant and makes excellent use of the symbiotic resource.

Example applications

Early Career Clinical Symbiont Research Award: Last year's winning application can be downloaded here.

General Symbiosis Research Award: Last year's winning nomination can be downloaded here.

Symbiont Selection Committee

The committee has sole responsibility for determining the
recipient of the Symbiont Awards. As discussed in the
conflict of interest rules, the committee and its individual
members are unable to comment on any unselected
nominations.

J. Brian Byrd

Chair.

Amanda Haddock

Rebecca Riggins

Fabio Zanini

Ethan Weiss

Award Recipients

Exemplars of research symbiosis.

Leonardo Collado-Torres

2019 Junior Symbiont

Benjamin Mako Hill

2019 General Symbiont

Fabio Zanini

2018 Junior Symbiont

S K Morgan Ernest

2018 General Symbiont

Our Mission

As Isaac Newton wrote to Robert Hooke in 1675: “if I have seen further, it is by standing on the
shoulders of giants.” The Symbiont Awards seek to honor modern giants.

Traditionally, data sharing
was challenging and expensive, so research proceeded by sharing completed findings. Our culture in
science and medicine has been built on the value of completed stories.
However, with the rise of networked computers, sharing complex datasets is increasingly feasible.
Once data are shared, anyone can make discoveries from these data. This is good, at least in the
short term, for research. Discoveries arrive sooner, and patients benefit more quickly. Discoveries
are also more likely to emerge when they are still meaningful, before new discoveries have
rendered them less useful. But to avoid harm in the long term, we need to make sure that incentives
are aligned to guarantee that generating novel and interesting datasets remains rewarded.

We envision a future in which widespread sharing of research data benefits all. We expect the
biggest winners will be those who share and share well, and in doing so, create the most value.
However, until that time comes, the Symbiont Awards seek to recognize these individuals and their
contributions.

Symbiosis denotes a long-term interaction
between two different species. The interaction may be beneficial to both or may impose a cost on
a member of the interaction. Data sharing may impose a cost on the individual sharing, or it may
provide benefits.

The Symbiont Awards, given annually, recognize exemplars in the practice of data sharing. We expect data sharing to play a key role in the scientific ecosystem. Some of the goals supported by data sharing include:

Facilitate meta-analysis and other granular, between-study analyses, even if the investigators who currently curate the data deem the project too far outside their interests* to justify a sharing effort.

Facilitate independent attempts to address existing hypotheses using existing data, which can reveal previously unknown sensitivity of prior analyses to methodological assumptions ("pressure-testing" of the robustness of hypotheses; sensitivity analysis)

Facilitate the generation of novel hypotheses, leading researchers to perform new studies and generate new datasets.

Unburden research teams from having to handle every incoming request for data.

Broaden the impact of existing data, which are often generated at great time and expense.

Facilitate the emergence of important research findings faster than any one team can act to produce the results either alone or in collaboration.

*fundamentally in the sense of “what they enjoy thinking about”, but also, rarely, in the financial sense. The question that seems esoteric to the original study team might be highly pertinent to health in another context.

The Symbiont Awards currently consist of two awards: the first recognizes an outstanding contribution
from any research area at any level. The second seeks to recognize the sharing of data relevant to
health by an individual at the training stage of their career — ideally a trainee with clinical
responsibilities.

Conflict of Interest Rules

PSB conference co-chairs do not serve as nominator or
endorser for any nomination submitted for this award.

Members of this award committee do not serve as a
nominator for any nomination for this award. If you have
nominated a candidate, inform the committee chair
immediately so that one of two actions may be taken: (a)
the nomination will be set aside for the year, or (b) you
will step down from the committee for the year.

Members of this committee should not be directly involved
in nominations prior to their submittal. Members can
answer general questions about what a nomination should
include but may not pre-review or comment on draft
nominations.

Members must maintain confidentiality about the internal
discussions of the committee. Information about committee
deliberations should not be shared with anyone outside the
committee, nor should the winner be discussed until PSB
has issued a formal statement.

Members of this committee and the committee as a whole do
not provide feedback to unsuccessful candidates. If a
member is asked for feedback, this policy should be cited.

Members of this committee are not eligible to be nominated
for the award during their time on the committee.
Individuals in the research group of a committee member
are also not eligible to be nominated for the award during
that member’s time on the committee.

Members of this committee must self-identify any
relationships/affiliations that might be perceived as a
source of potential bias, and inform the committee chair
of the COIs before any candidates have been discussed.
Identify any candidates with whom you: have had close
personal or working relationships within the past 5 years
or the period covered by the award, whichever is longer;
anyone for whom you were thesis advisor/advisee; anyone
for whom you were a postdoctoral advisor/advisee; anyone
for whom you were a faculty mentor/mentee; or any other
case where your judgment could be affected. Also identify
any candidates from your current institution or one where
you worked within the past 5 years.

In the event that a committee member has a relationship
described in rule 7 with one or more nominees, s/he should
disclose that relationship to the other committee members
and describe the nature of the relationship(s). The other
committee members should then decide (without the conflicted
committee member) whether the conflict is adequately
mitigated by disclosure. In the event that a majority of
the other committee members believes the conflict is not
adequately mitigated by disclosure, the following procedure
should be followed: (1) The conflicted committee member may
not participate in the discussion of the conflicted nominee;
(2) If the non-conflicted committee members feel a
conflicted nominee should be an awardee, then those
committee members should send a written description of the
conflict and the rationale for their decision to the PSB
co-chairs; (3) if a majority of the PSB co-chairs believe
the decision has been improperly biased by the conflict, the
conflicted nominee cannot be the award winner, and the
committee will be tasked with selecting a different awardee.